I started going out at night the next day.
I waited until my grandmother was asleep, put on my sneakers, and closed the front door without a sound. After midnight, the streets emptied out. Here and there, shapes appeared beneath the streetlights. Things with blurry legs. Lingering spirits. Weak ones. There was no need to bother with those.
I was looking for places with a heavier presence.
My body knew when a place was dense with yin energy. The surface of my skin turned cold, and I felt a tug in my palms. Like a magnet pulling iron, my body leaned in that direction.
The first night, I went to an empty commercial building in a redevelopment zone. Yin energy rose from the entrance to the underground parking garage. The damp, heavy kind. I went down. In the darkness, I saw a shape. A ghost clinging to the ceiling as if it were hanging from a parking garage pillar. A minor spirit. Around Grade Seven.
I reached out and pulled. Three seconds. The shape was sucked into my palm. A stream of raw yin energy flowed through my meridians. It was cold. Much weaker than when I absorbed Jangmuk, but the sensation was the same.
My nose didn’t bleed. My fingertips went numb for a moment, then came back.
This much was fine.
The third night. The basement of an abandoned hospital.
This place was different. The yin energy wasn’t gathered in one spot. It was spread throughout the whole corridor, as if it had seeped into the walls. There wasn’t just one shape, either. Three. At the end of the hall, in front of the operating room, and beneath the stairs. Each wandered on its own.
I dealt with them one at a time.
The first one. The thing at the end of the hall. When I reached out, it was sucked in without resisting. Weak.
The second one. In front of the operating room. This one was a little different. When I tried to absorb it, the yin energy pushed back. It bounced off once. My palm went numb. I grabbed it again. This time, I pulled harder. Five seconds. It went in.
The third one. Beneath the stairs. This one was the strongest. Around low Grade Six. As I began absorbing it, a fragment of Jangmuk stirred inside my meridians. A chill ran down my spine. It was cold. Like a warning.
I didn’t stop.
Seven seconds. The third ghost entered my body. I felt the walls of my meridians give way. Pressure pushing from the inside out. The area beneath my ribs turned cold.
I sat on the stairs. It took me a while to catch my breath. About two seconds.
That was when I realized something.
The way raw yin energy flowed through my meridians was—weird. Actually, it wasn’t flowing at all. Instead of circulating through the central channel of my meridians, the yin energy was seeping into the walls. Like water soaking into the pipe itself instead of flowing through it.
At first, I thought something was wrong. That something had gone bad.
But the parts where it had seeped in had grown sturdier. Just a little. It felt like the walls of my meridians had gained another layer. Like a cracked bone healing stronger than it had been before. That was the sensation.
I opened and closed my palm. The feeling was sharper than before.
A week passed. Six hauls.
I went out every night. Abandoned buildings, stalled construction sites, basements of old boarding houses. I searched for places where yin energy had gathered. Most of them were minor spirits around Grade Seven. Sometimes there was a low Grade Six mixed in.
I started to see a pattern.
Every time I absorbed one, raw yin energy seeped into the walls of my meridians. The walls grew thicker. And the thicker they got, the less the next absorption hurt. My capacity was increasing. The pipe itself wasn’t getting wider; its walls were getting stronger.
This probably wasn’t how things worked in the Spirit Management Bureau’s handbook. I didn’t know exactly what the Bureau taught, but I’d heard the Spirit Gauge read refined yin energy. Refined. In other words, you filtered the raw stuff, cleaned it up, then accumulated it. I didn’t filter anything. I fed it to the walls raw.
That was probably why the Spirit Gauge couldn’t detect it.
I was starting to understand why I registered as zero.
The tenth night. The tenth one.
I overdid it that night.
At an abandoned factory on the outskirts of the city, I encountered a mid-grade Grade Six vengeful spirit. It was different from the minor spirits I’d dealt with before. Its shape was distinct, and the density of its yin energy made the air heavy. I could feel resistance when I breathed.
I began absorbing it. The vengeful spirit resisted. Hard. Yin energy collided with the entrance to my meridians. It felt less like pushing and pulling and more like an outright collision. Sweat broke out on my forehead. The tip of my nose turned cold.
A fragment of Jangmuk reacted. Cold ran down my entire spine. Stronger than before. Before, it had been one line. This time, there were three. My spine, left ribs, and right shoulder blade. All at once.
A warning. Telling me to stop here.
Twelve seconds. The vengeful spirit went in. The walls of my meridians pushed outward from the inside. This time, it wasn’t subtle. It felt like the entire wall was swelling. The inside of my ribs turned hot, then cold. The edges of my vision darkened.
I dropped to my knees and braced a hand against the ground. The concrete was cold. A thin line of blood ran from my nose.
I closed my eyes and felt around inside my meridians. The raw yin energy was pushing against the walls. If I left it like this, it would flow backward. And if it flowed backward—the sensation I’d felt in Episode 3 would return. The feeling of being dragged toward the Other Side.
I pushed it in. Not toward the center of my meridians, but toward the walls. Deliberately. Until now, the yin energy had seeped into the walls on its own. This time, I pushed it there myself. Pain came. It felt like grinding down bone. I gritted my teeth. My jaw creaked.
Thirty seconds.
The walls held. Then they grew another layer thicker.
I opened my eyes. My vision cleared. I wiped the blood from my nose with the back of my hand. The sensation in my fingertips was sharper than before. I could feel the texture of yin energy flowing through the air. Like knowing which way the wind was blowing through your skin, my palm could read the flow of yin energy.
It was a new sensation.
Three weeks passed. Twelve hauls.
My body had changed.
The walls of my meridians had grown incomparably thicker. Absorbing a minor spirit around Grade Seven put no strain on me at all. Low Grade Six was manageable, too. Mid-grade Grade Six was my limit. Anything above that—I still didn’t know.
If I tested myself with the Spirit Gauge, I’d still register as zero. I was sure of it. What was inside me wasn’t the kind of thing that machine could read.
But the number zero didn’t weigh on me as much as it used to.
I knew something was building up inside me. No one else knew, but I did. I could feel it when I opened my palm. The raw density flowing along the walls of my meridians. Whether the Spirit Gauge could read it or not, it was there.
I went out every night. I came back every night. My grandmother didn’t know. In the morning, she set the table, I ate, and I went to school. The same ordinary day, over and over. Except for the nights.
And every night, the fragment of Jangmuk changed a little. At first, it only sent warnings. A line of cold. A sign of danger. But after the twelfth absorption, Jangmuk’s reaction changed. It wasn’t cold anymore—it was a direction. A slight tug at a specific point in my spine. As if it were pointing somewhere.
Jangmuk wasn’t helping me. That much was certain. The remnant of a conquered power would disappear along with its host when the host died, so it was in Jangmuk’s interest for me to stay alive. That was all.
But that “all” was pretty useful right now.
The last night of the third week.
I was on my way home. Three in the morning. As I walked down an alley, my palm tugged. Hard. The presence was denser than that of the minor spirits I’d encountered before.
I turned my head. At the end of the alley, in a stretch where the streetlights were out, something was wandering. Its shape was distinct. It had legs. Arms. A face.
Grade Five.
I stopped. My heart skipped a beat faster. The walls of my meridians reacted. The fragment of Jangmuk sent cold running down my entire spine. Not three lines, but five. Stronger than anything I’d felt before.
I’d never tried absorbing a Grade Five spirit.
The shape looked at me. The moment the eyes of the dead recognized the living, the temperature in the alley dropped. My breath rose in white clouds.
I took my hand out of my pocket.
Not yet. Not tonight.
I turned and walked away. I felt the pressure of yin energy behind me. It didn’t follow. Not yet.
I got home. I closed the front door and took off my shoes. I looked toward my grandmother’s room. The darkness beneath the door was undisturbed.
I washed my hands at the sink. The cold water carried away the blood from my nose. I looked in the mirror. My face stared back at me. Ordinary. The face of a seventeen-year-old boy.
But my eyes were different from three weeks ago. I couldn’t put into words what had changed. They just seemed deeper. Like there was another layer to what I could see.
I pulled the blanket up and lay down. I closed my eyes. The walls of my meridians vibrated quietly. Raw yin energy flowed along them. It didn’t hurt. I’d gotten used to it.
Grade Five.
That one was next.
I clenched and opened my palm. Sensations that hadn’t been there three weeks ago lingered in my fingertips.
I still wasn’t ready. But I knew which way to go.
I closed my eyes. Sleep came. Faster than before.